“They cut the umbilical cord, give you a slap on the ass, and presto! you're out in the world, adrift, a ship without a rudder.”

“Deep in the blood the pull of paradise. The beyond. It must have all started with the navel. They cut the umbilical cord, give you a slap in the ass, and presto! you're out in the world, adrift. You look at the stars and then you look at your navel. You grow eyes everywhere -in the armpits, between the lips, in the roots of your hair, on the soles of your feet. What is distant becomes near, what is near becomes distant. Inner-outer, a constant flux, a shedding of skins, a turning inside out.”

“If you're great, you can stay that way and people will believe in you, swear by you, turn the world upside down for you. But, if you're only partly great, or just a nobody, then what happens to you is lost. (Read by Henry Miller)”

“A world without hope, but no despair”

“Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.”

“I was alive. But I was alive without a memory, without a name; I was cut off from hope as well as from remorse or regret. I had no past and would probably have no future; I was buried alive in a void which was the wound that had been dealt me. I was like the wound itself.”

“There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem. It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity – you have to be a liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going.”